Friday's Letters

Dear Husband,

Well you have made it to your first non-weekend. I'm sure you are dreading these 3 straight weeks of work more than I am. I'm hoping we can make it these crazy weeks without a huge brawl. So far so go, but we haven't even made it through the first weekend so it's probably too soon to say. Thank you for being so devoted to our family that you are "willing" to work for 19 days straight. I love you!

Dear Evelyn,

You've been a good baby this week. Now please just continue to be your cute and good self for the next 14 days. I'll give you lots of ice cream if you do! I'm not above bribery. Love you!

This was just taken from my living room window, so it isn't the best picture.

Dear New "Car",

You are not a car; you are a tank! This picture doesn't do you justice. I need one of me standing right next to you. I feel tiny driving you around. I also feel like I'm going to back into something or sideswipe something. Slowly I'm getting used to you, but I think I will be banished to parking in the back of parking lots for quite awhile. Parking you well is nearly impossible! On the plus side I can carry my family of 3 and 5 of our closest friends with us wherever we want to go or just a huge load of things from Target!

Dear Wilhelm Auto Repair,

Thank you, thank you, thank you for fixing the A/C in my new "car". (Let's not talk about how we bought a car without functional A/C in this heat! At least that means we got an awesome deal!) I was so happy to hear it only needed to be recharged! You guys always do great work and we never feel ripped off. Thanks for doing it quickly too. It's nice to be able to leave the house again.

Thankful Vol. 5

I am thankful...
- for a nice cool house in this 100+ heat.-  for the little bit of rain we got last night. While it wasn't much every little bit counts.- for a relativity good baby. While she's starting to do naughtier things and get into stuff, all-in-all she's been easy. She plays well by herself, eats well, and sleeps well. We've been so blessed to have her in our lives.- for a hubby who is willing to drive and hour each way to and from work.- that my hubby has a steady job now. That reliability brings a lot of peace to our home.

Linking-up with Carina@A Punk, A Pumpkin & A Peanut

Date From The Jar #4

You can read about date #1 {here}, #2 {here} & #3 {here}

This past Saturday Nick and I went on a date night. We figured it would be a good weekend for it. It was our last free weekend together before two weekends of Guard Drill in a row for Nick.

Saturday ended up being a super crazy day. (More on that to come) So it was so nice having something to look forward to. By the end of the day we were dropping off Evelyn at my parents' house and headed down town to our favorite Bar/Pizza Place.

Yia Yia's is a local pizzeria. They also pride themselves on their extensive beer list. (The above picture is of their beer menu.) They have about 10 beers on tap. Only a couple do they have all of the time, while the other's are always changing. They have upwards of 400 different beers on any given night in their beer case. There beer menu is categorized by type of beer and then lists the brewer and country it comes from. You can pretty much find anything you could ever imagine.

 The pizza at Yia Yia's is also delicious! It's a thin crust pizza, without too much sauce. They have many different kinds to pick from or you can build your own. We always go with the Pacific which is marinara sauce, green peppers, pineapple, canadian bacon and cream cheese! It's sooooo tasty. If you've never had cream cheese on a pizza you are missing out! They always serve the pizza with a few hunks of their homemade bread, which is also delicious.

Our best impressions of Evelyn's new whinny face.

The last time we had been to Yia Yia's was before I was even pregnant. So well over a year and a half. It was nice to relax, drink a good beer and eat some good pizza.

We started off the night with some Guinness off tap. It was so good! I had never had a Guinness before, now I'd say it's one of my favorites. Mine was almost gone by the time our pizza was done. We decided we should share another beer, because neither of us really wanted to drink another whole one. After looking over the beer menu for awhile we decided on this:

It's called Gulden Draak Ale and it was from Belgium. The taste was delicious. It was sweet and fruity, perfect for dessert. I couldn't drink much of it though, because it was extremely fizzy. I'm not a big carbonation fan and this beer had as many bubble as champagne. So I'm probably weird, but carbonation hurts my mouth. That's why I'm not much of a soda fan.

It ended up being a wonderful date night and the perfect end to a hectic day. We of course had to drive-thru McDonald's on the way to pick up Evelyn to get some ice cream sundaes. We can pretend it was all because we want share a treat with Evelyn, but we all know the truth is Nick and I love $1 sundaes from McDonald's.

I've been a little MIA from the blog these last couple of weeks. Not sure why, but I've just had a lot going on and blogging hasn't been a top priority.

I hope you all are having a wonderful week so far! Hope you are staying cool, because the heat is killing us here in Nebraska.

Thankful Vol. 4

I'm so thankful for my hubby!
This week hasn't been the best for me. I've lacked energy and just haven't want to do anything all week. I've been a little discouraged which just leads to lack of motivation.
Thankfully my hubby took notice.
Last night I asked him to run to the store for me. So after he got home he got Evelyn ready and took her with him as he ran to the store. It was nice having that time to myself. He also picked us up some dinner. Which was such a blessing, because I was dreading having to cook.
This hot weather makes me despise cooking!
Well this morning when I head to the fridge to get my coffee I see this.

It just made me feel so happy inside. He got me one of my favorite candies, a Toblerone bar, when he ran to the store! It's the little thoughtful things like this that just brighten my day.
I needed this to bring me back to a good and happy place. A place of thankfulness and joy.
What are you thankful for today?

Linking up with Carina!

A Glimpse Into My Mind

There have been a lot of things on my mind lately. A lot them have seemed to focus around a feeling of not measuring up.

Right now I'm feeling that in almost every area of my life I'm not quite hitting the "mark". I'm not being the best Christian, I'm not being the best wife, I'm not being the best mommy, I'm not being the best homemaker, I'm not being the best friend. On and on I could about all these things I'm starting to feel I'm just failing at.

Yet I know that this elusive "mark" is an impossible standard that I'm trying to hold myself to. While I may say, "Oh it's ok if my housework suffers, because I'm chasing Evelyn around all day" I'm really thinking to myself, "Wow, I really need to get it together! Evelyn's an easy baby, why can't I get some sort of rhythm down?" I know I shouldn't be trying to be perfect, but I find it hard to give myself grace and just let perfection go.

I feel like I have this monumental task of trying to better myself. Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to do it all on my own. I'm praying for the strength and guidance from the Holy Spirit to help me change my areas of struggle. It just seems like once I feel I'm making headway with one personal struggle of mine, another one shows it's ugly head and reminds me that I have so much farther to go.

Being a perfectionist is one of those struggles. I know it's unobtainable, yet I still break my back sometimes to try and achieve it.


Why do we do this to ourselves? Why are we demand so much from ourselves? God doesn't demand perfection, yet we break ourselves down fighting for it!


Is it because down deep we know that we were meant for something more than this? That we were meant for complete and perfect communion with our Father, but sin entered the picture and changed all of that. So instead of living in paradise we have to live in this world with just the hope of paradise to come.


I don't know where I'm going with this post. Mostly I just needed to get these thoughts out of my head, otherwise they just get muddled up in there and make it hard to concentrate on anything else.


How do you find encouragement when you are feeling like you're not measuring up to your personal expectations of yourself? Are there any specific Bible verses that help to center you back to God and His Grace? Have you read any books that have given you more clarity? Please let me know! Either leave a comment or e-mail me.

I hope you all are having a fantastic start to your week!

Friday's Letters

Yes I'm a little late with my letters today. It's been kind of a crazy day so far.

Linking up with Ashley@Adventures of Newlyweds!

Dear Headaches,
You seem to be more frequent lately. I know that part of it is because I need to go see an eye doctor and get new glasses. Another part of it is that I'm already addicted to a second glass of iced coffee in the afternoon/evening. I didn't have one yesterday and still at 4pm I have the headache I woke up with. Please just let me be. I'm tired of having you so often!

Dear Nick,
So last night you put away all of the dishes and re-loaded the dishwasher. While I'm super appreciative of that, there is just one little thing. All of those dishes you put away were DIRTY! I know I wasn't the kindest on the phone when I informed you of that. For that I'm sorry. I'm still not quite sure how you didn't notice. I love that you were helping out though, regardless of it going terribly wrong!

Dear Weekend,
I need more of you! You should start multiplying. This schedule works for me: 2 days of work followed by 2 days of rest. I think everyone would agree that this would be ideal. If that doesn't work for you how about 3 day weekends every weekend! You can choose.

Dear Heavenly Father,
Did you notice I left you till the end? Have you noticed how I've been avoiding you lately? I honestly don't know what's up with me. Every time I've tried to sit down for my time with You over the last few weeks I just couldn't focus. I feel like I haven't known what to say lately. I want to be back on track with You, because I don't like this feeling of being far from You. I'm going to try to make time for You a bigger priority in my day. You know what is in my heart even when I can't seem to say it. Let's work on this!

----------------------------------------

Well friends now I'm off to go make myself an iced coffee and hopefully that will save me from this darn headache!

I'd love to know if you have anything fun planned for this weekend! Just leave me a comment.

Happy Friday!